Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chronicle of a Death foretold is a book you'll either love or hate. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's third novel is a short tale of a town where everyone other than the victim is prewarned about a murder. Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman are a newly wed couple celebrating their marriage, when Bayardo discovers that Angela is not a virgin. She is sent back to her family in disgrace, and her brothers demand to know who was her partner. Angela names Santiago Nasar, the young Arabic man who is "the catch of the town" according to the narrator's sister. In duty to their sister's dignity, the brothers Pablo and Pedro Vicario pledge to kill ...

One of the greatest novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this earned him the Nobel Prize. A slim novel, it is little longer than a short story, every word and detail part of the momentum to a brutal climax. As the title suggests, the book centres around a death – a murder – which everyone except, tragically, the victim seems to anticipate. Yet, trapped in a culture of machismo and revenge, nobody acts to prevent it. Marquez' setting is similar to that of his other novels, a small Colombian town. Everyone knows one another, and the grudge two brothers hold against the victim is well known. But, even though the killers themselves wish to be stopped, a ...